I imagine that there was a considerable period of post-production for the film whereby Nagano probably wasn't as solicited. If he works at a decent pace, it's quite reasonable to think that he could have gotten a bit of a head start on the manga.

Arcanum93 wrote:I imagine that there was a considerable period of post-production for the film whereby Nagano probably wasn't as solicited. If he works at a decent pace, it's quite reasonable to think that he could have gotten a bit of a head start on the manga.

I thought FSS: Designs 4 was supposed to release before the manga started up again...

According to the internet, the illustrations are supposed to be characters that will be important in the upcoming part of the story; a review on Amazon Japan says the only new illustrations aside from the GTM-style KOG are Fatima Ohaine in Biscuit Style and Norgan Siegbau. The others are Haird Grover, LDI-20, and Kaiserin images that have apparently come up before.